“Then I’ll send a wireless there now,” she said, and proceeded to write out a message.
“Hold all passengers of the ‘Mona’ for identification at Honolulu dock. Two criminals aboard.... Signed, Linda Carlton.”
“The Captain ought to pick up that message, too,” she remarked, turning to Dot as soon as the words had been sent. “And the thing for us to do now, is to make sure that we beat that boat to Honolulu!”
Realizing their need for rest and food, the girls went back to their taxi and directed the driver to take them to the best hotel the seaport afforded. Here they engaged a room for the night and proceeded to make themselves comfortable. After they had their baths, they stretched out on the bed in their room, shaded and darkened by awnings from the hot sun, and began to discuss the proposition seriously. They realized now how suddenly they had plunged headlong into what really might be the experience of a lifetime—an undertaking that took most fliers months and months to prepare for.
“Do you think we ought to go, Dot?” asked Linda, over-awed for the first time at the dangers of the project, when she considered them for somebody besides herself.
“I’m dying to go!” cried the other girl, her eyes sparkling with anticipation. “There’s only one thing that might hold me back.”
“What’s that? You mean consideration for your parents?”
“No. They’d be willing to let me do anything you considered safe. It’s just that if I didn’t go with you, you could take a more experienced flier in my place—or a mechanic or a navigator. And that would be better and safer for you.”
“Nonsense!” laughed Linda. “I can do those things, and if anything goes wrong, you can take the controls. You certainly fly well—I’d trust you a lot farther than a good many boys I know—like Ralph Clavering, for instance. You’re air-minded—you have air sense, to put it another way—and you never get rattled. You can take charge if I want to rest—though it isn’t nearly so far as Paris, and I flew that alone.”
“That’s true,” agreed Dot. “It isn’t even as far as if we were taking off from Los Angeles.” She was pleased, more than she could say, at her chum’s praise, for Linda Carlton never said anything she didn’t mean.